She was presented as a calm-natured female Thundercat based on the puma. She was a healer and medic for the team, and rarely called upon for the most arduous battles. Yet she was extremely agile and swift, capable of acrobatic maneuvers that rivaled those of the talented Thunderkittens, WilyKat and WilyKit.
At the onset of Season 2 of the animated series, she and two other protagonists were introduced [Ben-Gali and Lynx-O] and those two male characters actually got a lot more screen-time than she did [especially Ben-Gali].
When creating live-action/animated series, sometimes writers overlook certain characters not out of spite, resentment or contemptuous intent, but merely out of a lack of ideas and strict time constraints.
I've done animation writing in the past. And those of you that are familiar with that genre of writing know that each 24 to 28-minute feature has to fit into a certain amount of script pages, on average. And you generally have time for an A-story [the main theme of the episode] and a minor B-story [which may be comedic, or an interlude type of presentation].
Also, writers tend to group certain characters as weak/supportive/dependents, while others are independents. The dependents get captured and the independents are usually the ones who come to the rescue [remember Heman and Teela, Superman and Lois etc]. The supportive characters may be spunky and gifted, bu they generally are not capable of overthrowing the supreme villain.
Lion-O was an independent, who despite his youthful persona had the courage and fortitude to lead his wolf pack... or his pride, if you want to get technical.
But Pumyra was definitely tagged as a dependent... in fact, in the later seasons, she was left behind in their old base with Tygra, while the other Thundercats moved to a new planet and set up a new Cats Lair. And the writers literally left her out of the future adventures.
[Screenshots of Pumyra, from the Thundercats Cartoon Series, 1987 - 1990]
In the series, she was known for utilizing a whip/sling as her weapon of choice. But in my remix above, she is more fierce and she is an independent, utilizing modified nightsticks that have blades replacing steel shafts. I also gave her a sexy outfit, and a tight miniskirt with an engineered fabric that gives her freedom to flex her legs.
Perhaps the series writers/creators ought to have utilized her more. And maybe she'll be back in the forthcoming Thundercats cartoon, slated for release next year [The article I wrote about that reboot is over here: http://dsngsfm.blogspot.com/2010/10/cats-from-thundera.html ]
Yet Pumyra will always have a special place in the hearts of all true Thundercat fans. And I'll do my part to ensure that premise:
The second poster of Pumyra is over HERE!
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